Review: Bomberman Live For XBOX360 Live

Go head to head with players around the world in an all out bomberman fest on XBOX Live. Blowing things up has never been better!

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Let's Blow Some People Up!

Bomberman has been one of my all time favorite classic games for years. I've owned just about every Bomberman title I could get my hands on; nothing though has come closer to fulfilling that Bomberman junkie in me quite like Bomberman Live.

The rules of Bomberman (for those whom have never played) is to blow up other players in an arena without having them blow you up first, or worse, accidentally blowing yourself up. It's an all out fight or die trying, strategy game that is completely addicting.

You start off with a character that you can customize. Your character has just one measly weak bomb when the game begins. You drop the bomb next to a square brick in the game and hope for there to be a power up hidden within the block. Sometimes blowing up the squares delivers blanks, or power downs. As you power up though your characters is faster, special bombs create more havoc, and in best case scenarios, your character can drop the mother of all bombs which can create an all out destructive blow it all to hell explosion. Your job is to stay alive while attempting to blow up other players.

With the incorporated online Live play included for Xbox Live users, the game is 100 times more fun than any other Bomberman video game made to date.

Bomberman Live can also be played alone, but if you have a Live account you will most likely enjoy the fun of blowing up the characters of other random Live players.

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Local Play

Local Play on Bomberman Live is gaming without being online You can verse other computer characters, or you can play with other people who may be in your home. Local Play allows users to unlock certain achievements in the game that would only be available on Local Play, so if you are into collecting all of the games achievements than you can unlock a few here in Local Play.

For those new to the game, it is a good idea to play solo for awhile just to get a feel for the game. Although it is set up in a very similar way to Bomberman Land for the Nintendo Wii, Bomberman Live includes a few new spin-offs in the arenas.

One for instance, which is a personal favorite of mine is painting tiles with your bombs. For instance, instead of running around trying to blow up other players, you will also- run around trying to blow up players, but with each bomb that goes off of yours, you will also be painting tiles. The player who paints the most tiles will win the game.

Another form of playing is an arena that will include quicksand. The quicksand tiles can stop your character dead in it's tracks. It's relatively simple though to spot which tiles have quicksand on them, so unless you purposely want to sink I don't see why else you'd end up in the sand.

There are quite a few fun arenas, but frankly most Bomberman fans will stick to the original classic version arena, which is basically a blow em' all up, before they blow you up.

In local play you have the option to customize how your game is played. If you want power downs to not be included in the game, feel free. If you want every item to be used during game play, you have that option as well. You also have the option to pick how many wins one must accomplish before the game is over.

All in all local play is fun, but if you don't have another player to go head to head with in the room, the fun gets old fast. Versing other human players is what really charges up game play into the fun zone.

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Live Play

Live Play is basically taking the entire game into online play where hundreds of other XBox Live players will be waiting for you to verse.

You can pick ranked matches, where the game will automatically pair you with players who are on the same gaming level you are at. You can also host a game where you are in charge of what arena to verse in, and how many wins are needed to finish the battle.

Once you have a set number of players in and ready to battle with the game starts and its an all out war zone. Online play can be difficult if there are more than 5 players however.

There are of course quirks involved with live play due to other players whom host games that will end the game before someone wins. This however for me, does not effect the games rating in Live play. You sometimes match with some who are looking to really play, and you sometimes will be matched with a crybaby who can't bare to lose and will end the game before they are dubbed the losers that they are.

Another quirk however that I encounter every time I am playing live, with a full perfect signal is that when bombs go off, my controller will rumble, which will sometimes cause a delay in my characters movement. This however does not ruin the game, it just causes me to rate live play as good, and not excellent. Fixing this issue though is simple; just turn off the rumble in the controller.

Overall Live Play is what makes Bomberman Live the fun addicting game that it is. Without Live Play, Bomberman Live would be a decent version of the game, but it would lose it's fun factor rather quickly.

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Controls

The controls in Bomberman Live are all laid out simply. You basically use the joystick on the controller to steer your Bomberman, and drop bombs by hitting the A button.

The remote control bomb however requires users to hit the B button to detonate it. Remote Control bombs are bombs that will explode after a certain amount of time, but if another player runs by it, you can press the B button to activate it before it self explodes on its own. It gives you the power to time when you want the bomb to go off. The best thing about it is that other players have no clue if, or when you will detonate it.

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Graphics

Although I have seen better graphics on other versions of Bomberman, Bomberman Live presents decent graphics to players. Things are nicely done, but they do lack that special pizzaz and detail that other versions have presented to gamers.

The simplicity though makes playing the game easier. Too much fluff, and you'd end up blowing yourself up more often than not.

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Customization

A new interesting addition to Bomberman Live was the addition of customizations. Although it is nothing to go giddy over, the added customizations are a new and interesting reward type system.

You see, for every achievement you unlock, new costumes will be added into the costumes section. At first customizations are pretty bleak, but as you play you will unlock other costumes which will allow you to change the clothing on your Bomberman character. Interesting costumes include a clown, pirate, angel, wizard, and many, many more. You can also mix and match the outfits to create unique looks for your character.

There are over 10,000 different looks you can add to your character, however if mix-matching outfits is not your thing, than the customizations are actually pretty limited. Personally I like my character to match, so I'm limited. Being able to customize your character though i excellent for Live games, because it is easier to locate your character when there are lots of other players.

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Overall

I consider Bomberman Live an excellent way to feed that competitive hunger in gamers. It's a game that is simple for new players to to pick up and get right into.

What is especially great about it is that you can either play against computer players, players in your home, or players on Live. he choice is yours.

All in all Bomberman Live is extremely fun, very addicting, and contains a ton of re-play value due to being able to log on to live for a quick battle against either your friends who have XBox Live, or strangers on Live who are just looking to play with other gamers.

The game can only be downloaded as of now on XBox Live, and will cost you 800 Live Points. In my opinion it's well worth the buy, and one players will not regret.